


I was summoned, and so I came

by Recluse



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen, Guardian Angels, not exactly sure what is going on with this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 00:52:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recluse/pseuds/Recluse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Makoto was born with a purpose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I was summoned, and so I came

He comes down to earth for a little boy who has a difficult life ahead, not so much by poverty but by lack of social graces. There are worse out there. But Makoto likes these cases the best, because when they achieve what he came for(the ability to speak without cringing, or to hold back when necessary, or something between the above extremes), they’re always so much happier than those he’s sent to bless with wealth. At least, that’s how he sees it.

And so that’s how Makoto Tachibana is born. A child who was meant, in secret, of course, to watch over Haruka Nanase, the quiet but intelligent boy who hid behind blank faces.

Makoto watched from the sidelines of heaven. Part of him is maneuvering the body below, but he’s not entirely incapable of seeing from afar. It’s a bit like having a living puppet, though that thought makes him feel uncomfortable.

At first, he finds Haruka hard to deal with. Even though most children open up quickly to kids their age, Haruka doesn’t. He shies away, into a shell that Makoto finds rather adult, even for a five year old boy in kindergarten. The very first day he drifts to a corner by himself with books, and Makoto wanders over only to get a cold stare. Actually, as he learns more and more about Haruka, he finds out that’s just his default face for anyone he doesn’t know.

He finds it cute, in a way, years later. At five years old, the body he inhabits feels uncertain instead. He tries again the next week, and just by luck he finds the golden ticket to Haruka: water.

They sit side by side and read books about oceans and lakes and anything water related they can find. Haruka is ‘weird’ to the other kids, and Makoto isn’t that weird but is weird because ‘he hangs out with the weird kid!’ but his radiation of virtue — the body he inhabits was naturally kind, and now his secret job of guardian angel doubles the aura — saves him from any bullying, and by extension, saves Haruka.

When he watches the way Haruka lights up at water, he's unprepared for the extent of his love for it. Any water, fountains, bathtubs, he learns quickly to hold Haruka’s child hand in his to prevent him from running straight into water fixtures.

The child he inhabits, controls, truly enjoys Haruka as well, and Makoto’s heart swells. It’s good that he picked a compatible body, he thinks, it’d be so much harder if the child he had been born into was more stubborn, but he’s a natural saint, and not just by Makoto’s presence. He’d gotten one of the best while picking a child to be born into.

The personality of his vessel shines through, tenacious but not overwhelming, somewhat stubborn but flexible, and Makoto simply guides him along. Maybe a little too simply, he thinks years later, as he watches his body struggle with responsibilities that aren’t his, never were, but he took to save others. 

But Haruka saves him from that. Haruka proves to be much more than Makoto bargained for, when he starts taking responsibilities off of Makoto’s human shell, he tells Makoto in his own way, “Stop worrying, relax. You don’t need to do this for everyone.”

Makoto is touched by the nine year old Haruka who waits until Makoto finally cracks, starts crying for the first time since he was a baby. Tells him that he’s scared of having siblings, as lovely as they sound, what if he’s a bad older brother. Haruka sits next to him and waits it out, and then holds his hand firmly, despite the age, and tells him, “It’ll be okay.”

Makoto is the angel here, but his heart is the one being fixed as he watches his vessel nod softly, smile, lean against Haruka and whisper, “I’m so glad we’re friends, Haru-chan.”

It means so much to him, to watch this friendship happen. The back and forth of giving, it reminds Makoto in heaven that really, humans are capable of amazing kindness.

Rin comes. Makoto wonders if he was assigned to the wrong boy.

Rin, he already can tell, is a maelstrom waiting to happen, and he wishes he could warn Haruka and his vessel that he’ll rock the steady boat, bring joy but then take it away. He’s selfish and troubled, and Makoto aches to help him.

(He finds out later that another angel had taken the job, though a bit late.)

Instead his vessel helps Haruka through the emptiness of being left again by the people he cares about. His vessel, Makoto thinks, doesn’t even need his guidance, it seems that he was born from the very start to find Haruka and understand his quiet gestures and simple speech, and all Makoto needed to do was give him a gentle push when his insecurities came around.

Then his vessel had started to corrupt. Sort of. Looking back on it, Makoto thinks it was probably his fault, finding Haruka cute so often, forgetting that his vessel was young and not actually an angel, but a boy. He’d been too relaxed with his thoughts, infected his vessel without meaning to.

It wasn’t as if he lost his kindness, no, it doubled. That was the problem. The doubling was dangerous, walked down the roads of stronger emotional commitment than was right in this point in humanity’s timeline, and Makoto let it happen because he had forgotten what it was like to be in a human vessel and fall in love with a rare smile.

It’s not Haruka he worries about. His vessel values his presence over anything. He worries about his vessel.

The crushing weight of hiding something so strong isn’t something an angel wishes on anyone, and Makoto is no exception to this. But Makoto doesn’t have the right to break current society. It’s against angel code, to go against the current grain.

(Still, he can’t control love.)

He watches, more and more worriedly, sees how the feelings spill over the top of the rim and trickle onto the sides, and knows that Haruka understands, somewhere in the depth of his adult-like soul.

So Makoto breaks a rule, for once and only once. He meets Haruka without his vessel.

He does not take the shape of Makoto, rather, he takes his true shape, something some humans finds grotesque and others find uniquely beautiful, and others still who have no opinion on it. He hopes Haruka finds him tolerable. He believes he will when he takes Makoto’s voice.

He meets him in the dead of night in a dream.

Haruka dreams of places like waves. The ground is never solid, and Makoto hovers over the surface of the rippling water until Haruka rises from the deep.

This is Haruka’s psyche he speaks to, staring at the eyes that pierce blue and the hands that are still frigid, though no longer melancholy.

"I know you."

"You do?"

Haruka is, he should have guessed earlier, a tad psychic. Makoto can’t help but laugh, something guttural that is from his true voice, not his borrowed one. Haruka’s psyche doesn’t flinch.

"You follow Makoto."

"Not quite."

Haruka blinks.

"Why?"

"I was meant to help you." Makoto says, grinning, though Haruka can’t see it. "I was, you see, your guardian angel. Makoto was simply my vessel."

"…Makoto isn’t dead, is he?"

"Oh, no." Makoto laughs. "He’s very much alive."

Haruka’s psyche nods at that, the blue color that had been creeping up his skin stilling, retracting. His ‘sadness’ and ‘worry’, Makoto thinks, showing themselves.

"I came here to ask you if you think you need me."

"Makoto or you?" Haruka asks evenly, and Makoto's wings flutter, thinking that maybe his vessel's overflowing care reached Haruka. 

"Me."

Haruka is quiet, or rather, his psyche is quiet, thinking.

"Makoto won’t…Change, will he?" Haruka looks at him, piercing. "You won't take anything from him?"

A psyche doesn’t change expression, but rather, the whole body mutates, expresses expression in the way a blind child understands them. Haruka deflates, turns blue, unhappy, but the tips of his fingers are red with possession, anger, ready to take a divine being by the head and do anything to make sure that what he doesn’t want to happen doesn’t happen.

Makoto shakes his head, or rather, tries to. Haruka’s psyche understands.

"He won’t change much. He’s always been good." He smiles fondly, remembering his vessel. "A one way ticket to heaven for him, unless something forces his fate."

The psyche says swiftly, “I don’t need you then.”

"Ouch," Makoto says, but there’s gentleness in his borrowed voice. "That stings. I’ve been with you since the beginning too, you know."

The psyche shakes his head, and Makoto understands. 

"Never tell him." Makoto warns. Haruka nods. "I never would."

"Because it doesn’t matter." He tells Makoto as he fades. "Makoto is Makoto."

Makoto only laughs. “I brought you together.” Are his last soft words, before returning a borrowed voice and marking Haruka’s not quite filled quota as done, telling the ones who ask, “I didn’t really need to be there.”

<\ />

Makoto wakes up in the morning feeling a little off kilter. He texts Haruka, not expecting any reply, and when the phone buzzes he almost drops it in surprise.

"Had a weird dream. Don’t disappear."

Warmth, all his own, floods him, and all his own words are his reply.

"Of course, Haru-chan."

 _There isn’t any difference_ , Haruka thinks.  _Like I said._

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry that this is like a complete mess
> 
> Someone said guardian angel makoto and I just was on that like white on rice, but it ended up getting weird
> 
> Makoto isn't exactly the guardian angel, but rather he's being controlled/directly influenced by Haruka's guardian angel, so the guardian angel gets to be called 'Makoto' especially since he's controlling Makoto. it's confusing, I know


End file.
